Technical Field
The present invention relates to an air-conditioning control system, and a method for connecting a control device and an operating terminal.
Related Art
A technique for wirelessly connecting a control device and an operating terminal is known (see, for example, JP-A-2008-215637). The control device controls a certain piece of equipment. The operating terminal is not associated with the control device, and belongs to a user. In this technique, the control device is operated from the operating terminal via a server that is provided on the Internet.
For example, there is a central air-conditioning system that conditions a plurality of rooms in a house with a single air-conditioning unit. An air-conditioning controller serves as the core of the central air-conditioning system. In the air-conditioning system, the air-conditioning controller is operated by an operating terminal that is not associated with the central air-conditioning system, such as a smart phone that belongs to the user. The air-conditioning controller is operated via a cloud server, for example, that is provided on the Internet.
In this case, to connect the air-conditioning controller and the operating terminal via the server, an initial setting, such as the following, is conventionally performed. For example, first, the user acquires, from the server, a server connection identifier (ID) and a password. The user acquires the ID and the password over the Internet from a smartphone or a personal computer. Next, the user inputs the acquired ID and password into the air-conditioning controller. Thereafter, the air-conditioning controller accesses the server via the Internet. Verification of the ID and password is then performed. As a result, the user who has the ID is able to operate the air-conditioning controller via the cloud server, from an operating terminal, such as a smartphone.
Here, in view of security and the like, the ID and the password used for the setting are preferably composed of a large number of characters and digits. Therefore, in the conventional method, the user is required to directly input the ID and the password, which are composed of a large number of characters and digits, into the air-conditioning controller. The user is required to perform a bothersome operation. In addition, in accompaniment with size reduction of the air-conditioning controller, the size of a touch panel for performing input operations also becomes smaller. As a result, an issue arises in that the user is more likely to make operation errors when inputting predetermined information, such as the ID and the password.